Edo Traveler

The place of exile is naturally Hakodate, which is the later generation of Hakodate. A small town was established in this place decades ago, and it is regarded as the second largest human settlement in the entire Ezo region except Fukushima Castle before Kaisong.

There is no need to introduce the local fishery resources. One of the top fishing grounds in the world, the Hokkaido fishing ground is nearby, and the kelp sent to Edo every year is worth hundreds of thousands of taels. It's not a bad guy, a real kelp, more than ten meters long, worth ten taels of gold, but a treasure.

Fishermen catch all kinds of seafood and sell them to Edo, Osaka, and even the Qing country on the mainland via various trade routes. It is said that the seafood exports of Ezo alone are as high as three million taels of gold each year, and the other side seems to be a bottomless pit.

After so many decades of development, Hakodate has become a prosperous fishing port town with a population of thousands of permanent residents. The shogunate and the feudal clan set up "clubs" here to purchase all kinds of seafood.

The official office of the shogunate in the Ezo region is also in Hakodate. There are two hundred Tsugaru and Southern feudal soldiers dispatched by the shogunate. The criminals were exiled to Ezo, trying to set up settlements.

In the past half-century, the colonial forces of the Shogunate and Tsarist Russia even fought against each other in the Ezo region. The lives left are in the hundreds. This place can be said to be the front line of the dispute between the two countries, and it is also a place of death.

By the way, why choose Hakodate?

Because this place can actually grow rice!

The entire town is located on a flat sandbank, and this area is also known as the Hakodate Plain. There is Hakodate Mountain in the east of the port, and Hakodate Port in front of the mountain. The water in the port is deep and it is a natural harbor. It is the gateway of Ezo to Honshu Island. The Matsumae and Kameda peninsulas blocked the northwest monsoon blowing from Siberia, making the area a relatively mild winter climate in Hokkaido.

It is no wonder that Americans will choose Hakodate to open the port in the future. It is true that the local area has developed to be self-sufficient, even a production-oriented city, which can feed a certain number of non-agricultural population. In addition, it is also close to the North Pacific, making it convenient for American whaling ships to dock for replenishment. This became the first batch of foreign trade ports after the black ships arrived.

But Chuemon is definitely not letting them do coolies in Hakodate. This time they are going to be sent to the Konomai Gold Mine, and first try to build a sturdy and warm house that can survive the five months of winter in Ezo. of. Expenses are nothing, we have money. Moreover, as exiled prisoners of the shogunate, the shogunate would have contributed money and effort to carry them to Ezo.

It is a point to be able to pit the shogunate. Anyway, the gold mine was found for the shogunate, and it was not owned by us. Chuemon directly went to Kesuga Qiyu and asked him to assign these people as hard labor to search for the mine. In the eyes of Feng Suga Qiyu, these people were already dead.

Sending them to search for mines can also allow them to exert a little residual heat, and die if they die. If they can find a gold mine, then they happen to stay where they are as miners, completely saving the shogunate the effort of recruiting manpower.

When greeted Feng Suga Qiyu, he casually asked what kind of mine Ezo has. He lives in Edo all year round, and has only been to Tokushima, Shikoku a few times, and has no idea about the Ezo area.

Hearing his question, Chungemon cautiously approached his ear, and then said two words mysteriously, two words that both people and ghosts are tempted.

Placer!

Sure enough, when he heard that there was gold dust, Qi Suga's eyes immediately brightened. In later generations, Japan's relatively high labor costs and the continued decline in international gold prices made the Sumitomo Consortium, which has mastered the world's top several wealthy gold mines, unexpectedly abandon the mining of the Hongzhiwu gold mine.

This is a top rich mine with an annual output of more than one and a half tons of gold and ten tons of silver. Originally there were more than 13,000 miners in the mine, as well as many technical personnel and family members, as well as a large number of service personnel that followed. As soon as the mine fell, the hula-la was all gone, and the huge gold mine was in ruins.

But now, huh, how much is a life worth? The most indispensable thing is human life. Even if mining disasters occur every year, the shogunate will not care at all. Of course, the premise is that there is a gold mine.

And Chuemon played a careful look, not saying that it was a gold mine, but instead said that it was placer gold. It is the kind of natural gold particles that dig out the riverside sediment and wash them directly in the water to sift out the gold. This thing has quick results. Take a dustpan to wash it. It can always be a little bit in size. If you don't keep it, you can also find gold particles the size of peanuts.

In addition, many places in Japan produce placer gold, and Oshu Yuzhou is a famous place for gold production in history. During the Genpei war, the Fujiwara clan who occupied Oshu was even more greedy for the wealthy even Genyoshi. When the two sides fought, the world even felt that the Fujiwara clan who had the money to hire, recruit, and supply more troops would win even more.

Aren't Ezo and Oshu together, they are almost in the same place.

Even Chuemon thought about the reason why Ezo has placer gold. Didn't he go to Satsuma before, and I had the honor to make friends with Guangxiang, the surveyor who once personally mined gold mines. Everyone knows this person, who can scrape out two or two oils from the mud, and his gold search method must be very good.

After learning his method of searching for gold, Tadaoemon usually likes to read miscellaneous books. UU reads www.uukanshu.com. I saw the records of the great explorer Mamiya Rinzo who died a few years ago in the Ezo and Kata area. , The description of a place is very similar to the existence of placer gold.

Suga Qiyu knew that Tadaoemon had something to do with the new Satsuma lord Shimazu Tadashi, and he also traveled to Kyushu. Suddenly believed it seven or eight points, and nodded again and again.

It's a pity that the Ezo area is the leader of the shogunate. It doesn't mean that whoever occupies it will belong to the shogunate. But Suga Qiyu is the younger brother of Tokugawa Ieki, and he belongs to the group of people who want the shogunate to be good, and there is no disappointment.

As a rotating old middle school, it is not just a random sketch of the prisoner who decides to exile. Chuemon has an extra heart. Don't say anything about it. You really found gold. The credit is yours, and of course it is mine. If you didn't find it, or the group of people begged for it, then you can pull it down, and no one cares anyway.

Very good, the two agreed, Chuemon led by Shintaro Terazawa, with a hundred soldiers from the training team, detaining more than three hundred exiled prisoners, left Edo, and took a boat to Hakodate. .

It only takes eight days to take a boat. This is because of the constant stops along the way. If there are steam steamers in the future, it will not be completed in one or two days.